PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.


URSUS.

I.


Ursus and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their
dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf:
probably he had also chosen his own name. Having found _Ursus_ fit for
himself, he had found _Homo_ fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned
their partnership to account at fairs, at village fêtes, at the corners
of streets where passers-by throng, and out of the need which people
seem to feel everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack
medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the
crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our
greatest delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade
before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the road of royal
processions.

Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the High
Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from country-side
to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town. One market